Need For Speed: Shift Review

For me, Need for Speed is
all about tearing through dark city streets in overly modified cars
covered in ridiculous vinyls with nitrous flames spewing from their
exhausts, complemented by an exciting, arcade driving style. Too much
Underground, I guess.

Need for Speed: Shift is rather different from its predecessors (apart
from the disastrous ProStreet) in that it takes the simulation approach,
a move which I think is pretty bold considering the other sims out
there, such as Gran Turismo, Forza, Project Gotham Racing, GRID and
DiRT, just to name a few. With some big names to compete against, how
does it fair?

Despite
the new direction for the series, Shift actually does a lot of things
very well: the graphics are simply brilliant; the cars are modelled in
great detail, both outside and in; there’s a good selection of 19 tracks
to race around on (bumped up to around 40 if you count the different
track variations); and, most importantly, a very decent line up of over
60 cars to race in, all of which can be upgraded, tuned and plastered
with vinyls. Good so far.

With PSN currently down,
I’ve only been able to play offline portion of the game (the online
mode will be reviewed at a later date) which presents you with two
options: Quick Race and Career. I like to do the ‘story’ modes on games,
so I went straight into the Career option.

Starting Shift’s Career mode for the first time, forces
you to partake in a lap around Brands Hatch in a BMW. Having recently
been to Brands Hatch, I was eager to see what its digital Need for Speed
counterpart looked like, and sure enough, it was all as I remembered
it. Convinced that Shift has managed to capture the feel of the
real-life race tracks, I began my hot lap; however it all went downhill
from here.

I watched in a mixture annoyance and mild disgust as my
car skidded repeatedly off the track and into the gravel, reacting with
amazing sensitivity to even the slightest stick push. At this point I
proclaimed “this is rubbish” and paused the game to try and find a
sensitivity option, to no avail. Needless to say, I finished my lap in
an awful time.

What I didn’t realise was that during this lap
Shift was assessing how well I could cope with the default controls –
the answer: I couldn’t. At this point, it brandished me with Easy
difficulty and every driving aid available. Of course, these can be
changed, but I decided it probably knew what it was doing and kept the
settings the same. Going into the next lap was like playing a whole new
game – in a good way.

The Career mode itself doesn't really have a story behind
it - it's just chains of events. I wouldn't normally mind a lack of
story from a driving game, but Need for Speed generally does have
a plotline, and, as the Need for Speed Wiki tells me, Shift is the first
game to lack a plot since Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit II - I had that
game years ago on my Gamecube!

Progressing through the Career mode allowed me to see that the developers have tried to cram a lot into this.

Players start off with an average car, such as my choice of Mazda RX-8,
progressing through car tiers unlocking cars from Audi, Aston Martin,
Lamborghini and Mercedes Benz (to name just a few) on their way to the
top tier 4 cars, which include the Pagani Zonda R and the Bugatti
Veyron. Cars are unlocked slowly through career progression and can then
be purchased, if you have enough funds. The cars can all be upgraded,
with both visual and performance enhancements, and yet again nitrous is
featured, although this time more realistically, with less exploding
exhausts and more subtle speed increases.

There are loads of different game modes. Often, events
are just simple races, although there are a few variations: Endurance
Races have a higher number of laps than normal; Knockout Races eliminate
the last player to completer a lap, or exceed a set time, depending on
whether you’re doing a Lap or Time Knockout; Manufacturer Competitions
force all drivers to use the same car, so the race is all down to driver
skill; and Series Competitions are similar to tournaments from previous
NFS games, where your position in each races counts towards your final
tournament standing. There are also Time Trials, in which the player has
a certain period of time in which to achieve the fastest lap, and Drift
Races which does what it says on the tin, although these are, in my
opinion, really, really diffcult to do well in.

One
rather interesting new game mode is the Car Battle – a one-on-one
best-of-three competition where drivers are given a choice between two
competing cars and take turns racing as ‘Leader’ and ‘Follower’. To win
you need to get 5 seconds ahead of your opponent or cross the line
first. As the Leader has a bit of an advantage, the third and final race
(if it’s required) begins with a rolling start with driver’s
side-by-side. There’s an online variation of this mode entitled Driver
Battle, where players choose which cars to drive, although, of course, I
have yet to test this.

Actual driving mechanics are pretty good and realistic, and you are forced
to slow down for corners in this game if you want to avoid totalling
your car on the track barriers. Crashes cause some serious damage to
your car, although if, like me, you're only on Cosmetic Damage mode, it
won't affect the car's performance. Accidents
cause visual effects too, blurring the screen, and sounding a short gasp
of breath from the stunned driver, which is particularly intense when racing in driver view.

Races can be quite unforgiving; going off the track often results in losing a lot
of positions, and cutting corners in any form is punished, even if it's
accidental. Racing using the driver view is an intense experience,
especially when in the middle of an accident.

Shift hands out rewards left, right and centre in a
variety of ways, and with all these rewards being hurled at you it's
unfortunate that the reward system is a bit disjointed, making it much
more confusing than it really should be. When boiled down, players are
rewarded in 4 ways: Driver Points, Stars, Badges and cold, hard cash.

The latter is simple to explain – do well in a race and earn cash to use on new cars and upgrades.

Driver Points reward players for performing certain
actions during a race, and the points are totalled up to progress you
through 50 Driver Levels.

With these Driver Points, Shift operates an two-way
Karma-style system, which changes depending on the type of actions you
perform to either Precision and Aggression.

As you may have guessed, Precision involves
precise manoeuvres that include sticking to the racing line, and
mastering corners, while the Aggression points reward you for performing
‘dirty’ over takes and spinning out opponents. While this sounds great,
the system is slightly flawed in the fact that I set out to be the
meanest, dirtiest driver in racing history, slowing down for corners by
ramming others cars and hitting their tail-ends to spin them and allow
me to get ahead, but still, still, I am classed in the Precision
section, which leads me to believe that getting the precision points are
rather a lot easier than acquiring aggression points. On top of that, I
can’t really figure out why earning points one way or another is
beneficial – there doesn’t seem to be an obvious difference between
becoming a reckless Aggressive driver, or a careful Precise driver.

Stars are awarded at the end of events, which
normally have three stars to be earned by placing on the podium
position, and a further two for reaching a ‘points threshold’, which is
basically means earning over a set number of Driver Points in a race. In
some events there are also stars to be earned for completing certain
challenges, such as performing a clean lap, beating a lap time, or, one
of my favourites, spinning out several opponents. You may, like me, be
thinking that there are an awful lot of things to be concentrating on
during a race to earn all the stars, so you will be as happy as I was to
learn that stars are maintained when retrying a race later on; that is,
if you’ve already earned your stars for your podium finish, but dropped
a star for performing a clean lap, the next time you attempt the race
you’ll only have to concentrate on performing a clean lap.

The Stars’ main purpose is to allow you to progress up
the 4 Tiers on the way to the Need for Speed World Tour. These Tiers
separate car classes and AI driving ability, and with each Tier unlock
comes new events and new, more powerful cars available to purchase. The
trouble is, if you make sure to earn every star in each race along the
way, you’ll be unlocking the Need for Speed World Tour before you’re out
of Tier 2, which doesn’t really work.

Finally, Badges are awarded for performing certain feats –
for example, driving over a certain Distance in a Japanese car, or
Trading Paint with a certain number of opponents. On average, each badge
is split into 10 ‘sub-badges’ each progressively more difficult than
the last. To use an example, for the Trading Paint badge, the first
sub-badge may require you to trade paint with 10 opponents, the second:
20, and the third: 50, etc.

A third of the way to the total the badge will turn into a
Bronze Badge, which will be prominently displayed at the screen when
you end an event. Completing more sub-badges will upgrade that badge to
Silver, then Gold, and finally, when all sub-badges are complete, the
Badge turns platinum colour and becomes an Epic Badge. Yes, Epic…

To keep track of these Badges, there is a whole little
menu dedicated to them, which is rather lucky for any trophy hunter as,
like many other recent games, earning these in-game rewards are
necessary to unlock some of the trophies.

There you have it: Shift’s reward system in a rather large nutshell; perhaps it could use some streamlining.

Shift is a brilliant game that I think is a lot of fun, and once I get
it back out of my broken Playstation, I'll be playing it a lot more.

Overall, fabulous graphics, including an amazingly
detailed driver view for each car and a good amount of vehicles, tracks
and upgrade possibilities are spoiled slightly by Shift’s steep learning
curve, extremely tricky Drift system and an overly complex reward
scheme.